The invention relates to document management. More particularly, the invention relates to use of temporal gaps in document production and/or modification to manage documents.
Individuals or groups that produce documents typically store the documents according to content, date of modification/creation, title, etc. When an individual wishes to retrieve a document so stored, the individual must retrieve the document according to the storage scheme. However, the individual may not remember the title or date of a document and must inspect a large number of documents in order to retrieve the desired document.
Many document retrieval schemes have been developed to help an individual retrieve one or more desired documents. For example, queries using keywords, phrases, dates of creation, document size, and other characteristics have been implemented to aid in document retrieval. However, individuals often remember events for which, or in response to which, documents were created. The retrieval schemes described above cannot be used to retrieve documents based on events unless the event fits one of the search characteristics.
For example, an individual may have printed a particular document in preparation for a meeting. The individual may remember the date of the meeting and the general content of the document, but not the title of the document, or where the document was stored. Thus, if the individual desired to retrieve the document again at a later date, the individual will likely search many documents before finding the desired document.
What is needed is a document management scheme that allows a user to retrieve documents in a more natural and meaningful manner.
A method and apparatus for document management is described. One or more gaps in document production are determined. The one or more gaps can be assigned one or more labels. In one embodiment, the one or more labels are used as retrieval cues for accessing documents. In one embodiment, known events (e.g., predetermined dates, user-defined events) are used to generate labels for the one or more gaps. In one embodiment, the invention provides a graphical interface representing gaps in document production, labels and associated documents.